WOMEN AS VOTERS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2466, 2 December 1886, Page 2

WOMEN AS VOTERS.

. The Amorican correspondent of a contomrorary.writeß .—A fa'vorito argument of the'promoters of women suffrage, in this country is that women,, if voters, would throw the entiro weight of their political influenco on the side of prohibition. Washington Territory has just passed through a hot election on the question, of tho prohibition of tho liquor traffic in many of its towns, on the local option principally, - This territory 1«b a population of over 100,000 and has over 20,000 female voters.. Tho result was divided. The largest towns voted against prohibition. Business considerations led merchants,, bankers, and other men to vote against prohibition. Tho lower and lawloss olement, male and female, voted solidly against prohibition—tho middle olaas, both male and female, voted for it. Two prominent women sumptcd tho territory in the interests of free rum. Whenever a majority of the males voted against prohibition a majority, of the women voted the same way. In the country and smaller towns, when a majority of males voted, for prohibition, the women voted tho same way.. The puring influenco of the women voters proved to be a thing of tho imagination, They wero influenced by the same motives aud.movei by the same impulses, as their husbands and male friends, and so voted. Woranu are not angela—they are human beings after all. Another faot that will have some weight in the discussion of the women's suffrage question is that though the right of women to practice;law is'concedod in fifteen States, two Territories, and in th» District of Columbia, but forty-eight female lawyers are in business in tho United States. This would indicate that lovely woman's confidence in her powers of argumont ; is mostly confined to casos where there is only one on the jury.